Leaders say Florence downtown revitalization is necessary

Editor’s note: This is the first in a five-part series on downtown revitalization. SATURDAY: A history of revitalization and why it’s needed SUNDAY: Downtown Florence and the perception of violent crime MONDAY: Downtown business owners worry about their future TUESDAY: Francis Marion University provides tools to help small businesses stay afloat WEDNESDAY: Downtown Florence and the drawing power of good design and art

FLORENCE - Ten years ago, when the members of the recently-formed Florence 2010 Committee called a public meeting at Poynor Adult/Community Education Center’s Auditorium, they didn’t know what kind of response the public would have at yet another attempt at downtown revitalization.

“Florence 2010 was formed to test the waters, to feel the pulse of the community to see if this was something six people cared about or if this was something the community cared about,” said former Downtown Development Corp. chairman George Jebaily.

“The very first meeting, I recall, was jammed,” Jebaily said.

A representative from the Main Street, an organization designed to assisting citizens in revitalizing their downtown areas and neighborhoods “posed the question ‘Is the revitalization of Florence something people care about?’ and the answer was a resounding, ‘Yes,’” he said.

The community response led to a construction of a master plan for revitalization and the Florence 2010 Committee eventually became the Florence Downtown Development Corp., a 501(c)3, dedicated to advising and encouraging downtown development, Jebaily said.

A downtown revitalization is essential for reinvigorating the spirit of Florence, said historian E.N. “Nick” Zeigler, as it establishes in Florence something that heretofore has never existed: a center.

“Railroads made Florence, railroads provided a steady source of income,” Zeigler said, “but the fact is the town itself was merely an adjunct to the railroad industry. The city never had a plan to develop. It was a railroad town. Railroad towns didn’t need planning.

“The courthouse (now the city-county complex) was put in the middle of a block between the commercial buildings and built on a pond,” he said.

A fire wiped out nearly all of Florence in 1893 and the railroads prevented Florence from becoming a center of culture until about 1950, Zeigler said, and Florence has constantly had to reinvent itself as a result.

“The difficulty (of the constant reinvention) has been that we have no focus because there is no ceremonial center,” he said. “When you go to Europe, they talk of the town center. We have no center.

There never has been any concentration (that says) this is the heart of Florence.

“Where is the heart of Florence? I think it’s out at the mall now,” he said. “... The parades down Evans Street used to concentrate people, but then the storekeepers said (that) too many people come and crowd in the stores during these parades, so they had to change it and move it out from downtown.

“I think what we need is a unifying spirit of the county, which I feel is still somewhat absent. The idea is if you revitalize the center, everybody will be attracted to it. We have torn down everything that had any interest: the city hall, the old courthouse. The only thing left is the post office building, but that’s not any great work of art. The downtown has no drawing power and it doesn’t have a good reputation.”

Zeigler said previous attempts at revitalization have failed because they have been little more than beautification projects instead of attempts to attract visitors back to downtown.

Former Florence Mayor Frank Willis said this is exactly the approach he wanted to change when he initiated the Florence 2010 Committee.

“My concept of redeveloping downtown was that it could not be a beautification project. It had to be an economic revitalization,” he said. “If we could not create, in the downtown area, an economy that would bring people downtown, they would come for a little while, but they wouldn’t stay.

“We began to lay the groundwork for investment opportunities,” Willis said. “We hired HDR Architecture to do a master plan for us. It took us a couple of years. Once we got the master plan completed, the Downtown Development Committee hired Hunter Enterprises to implement the master plan and they told us what we had to do to make that master plan work.

“You’ve got to have a historical district. We look at the arts and cultural district, we looked at the retail district — all the aspects of what goes into making a downtown. They laid it out as part of the implementation process and that process is still taking place.”

“You’ve got to reconceptualize (revitalization) as an economic redevelopment process that is no different than running a mall,” Jebaily said. “It’s a redevelopment strategy that, at its basics, is no different than Magnolia Mall.”

Like Willis before him, downtown revitalization was one of the top items on Mayor Steven J. Wukela’s agenda when he took office last fall. His appeal during his campaign was to “heal downtown.”

It’s a campaign promise, Wukela said, that is as instrumental to the downtown revitalization as economic development.

“If you stand on the top of the city-county complex and you look south down Irby Street, you see banks and restaurants and the library and the little theatre,” Wukela said. “If you turn around and look to the north side of town, you see none of those things. You’ve got abandoned properties.

“Certainly, the north side of town is populated largely by citizens who are black and the southern part of our town is largely populated by those who are white. That’s a division in our city that can’t be ignored,” he said. “The center of that division is our downtown: Evans Street and Dargan Street, which have decayed and deteriorated over the years.”

Wukela said a revitalization of Evans and Dargan streets, as well as the former site of the Bush Recycling Center, is what is needed to “heal the city.”

“What I’d like to see (at the former Bush site) is a transportation center (and) I think we would draw people from the north and south side of town. I think if we had a light rail line between Francis Marion (University) and downtown, we could bring Francis Marion students downtown (once the FMU Performing Arts Center is established),” he said. “I’d like to see that junkyard property turned into a transportation hub that connects Francis Marion and downtown Florence, ultimately, Conway and Myrtle Beach (via an) Amtrak line. Ultimately, I’d like to see a light rail line that serves the entire city with that hub as its center. I think that would increase traffic downtown.

“(Downtown) should be the heart and soul of our city, the center that unifies us, and instead it divides us — or at least it has in the past. I want to heal that division by rehabilitating downtown, by bringing people from the north side and south side together. I think that can be done and slowly but surely we’re getting there.”